Travel Experts
- DPRK

Experts by Location

Political Tours provided a really excellent 10-day tour of Kosovo for our students. Everything was very professionally organised, with a full timetable of varied meetings, lectures and site visits, and all our group came back with a very good overview of the real political situation on the ground. I’d highly recommend them to other universities and institutes organising political study tours.

Rudiger Frank

Our North Korea Tour Guide, Ruediger Frank, is currently tenured Professor of East Asian Economy and Society at the University of Vienna, and Deputy Head of the Department of East Asian Studies. He is an Adjunct Professor at Korea University and at the University of North Korean Studies (Kyungnam University) in Seoul, as well as an Associate at the Modern East Asian Research Centre in Leiden and the Austrian Institute for International Affairs (OIIP).

In June 2011, he joined the World Economic Forum, Global Agenda Council on Korea.

Prof. Frank is regularly consulted by governments, media and businesses on North Korea and East Asia. Most recently, this included consultancy work and a background policy paper for The Elders in preparation for the visit by President Martti Ahtisaari, Prime Minister Gro Brundtland, President Jimmy Carter and President Mary Robinson to the Korean Peninsula and China.

He is Deputy Chief Editor of the A-ranked European Journal of East Asian Studies, co-editor of the book “Korea: Politics, Economy and Society” published annually since 2007, Member of the Editorial Board for the book series “Brill’s Korean Studies Library”, an Associate at “The Asia Pacific Journal”, Member of the Editorial Board of “Korea Review of International Studies”, Co-Founder and Member of the Editorial Board, “Vienna Graduate Journal of East Asian Studies” and “Vienna Studies on East Asia”. He is also the founding editor of a new book series at Global Oriental titled “Security and International Relations in East Asia”.

Prof. Frank’s teaching focuses on the region of East Asia (roughly defined as Northeast Asia plus ASEAN) with a particular emphasis on the two Koreas. He has developed an MA program on East Asian Economy and Society at the University of Vienna, which since 2011 is offered in English.

He holds an M.A. in Korean Studies, Economics and International Relations and a Ph.D. in Economics.

In 1991/1992, he spent one semester as a language student at Kim Il Sung University in Pyongyang and has been researching North Korea ever since.

Visiting Professorships included Columbia University New York and Korea University Seoul.